As 2A supporters, we need to be honest, and acknowledge there is unfortunately not enough research or data to assert that armed neighborhoods are safer than unarmed ones, or that the rate of LTCs has a deterrent effect. Just not enough data, not enough scientific research, and way too many other factors at play. Lott's research is impressive but also controversial. Correlation and causation are two different things.

However, I know this: gun control doesn't work.

Like many on this board, I come from a country where there is strict gun control - France. Like a lot of those countries, strict gun control was imposed after World War 2, when civilians were ordered to surrender or register certain classes of firearms. Even among resistants, a lot of people didn't want to bother with paperwork, and sometimes chose to give away whatever rifle they had gotten parachuted over, or pistols stolen from the Germans. I suppose at the time, it was a way for some people to turn the page. They didn't see the value in it.

Getting a shotgun in France is easy if you have a hunter's license (and there are a lot of French households with legally owned shotguns, or old shotguns who have been handed from one generation to the next, and are often not registered - ask me how I know). Getting centerfire rifles or handguns is a lot more paperwork, and requires a license, membership with a club validating your permit everytime you shoot, and so on (that said, ironically, I know French people who legally own full auto ARs).

Now, for a very long time, the truth is that gun control actually did work in France, in the sense that there was very little violent crimes compared to the US. And very few gun-related deaths. The crime rate is higher for petty crimes, but much lower for murder, armed robbery, and so on.

So an argument could be made that in those countries, gun control worked. Guns were very difficult for criminals to obtain, making it harder to commit violent crimes.

But things quickly changed when the Iron Curtain fell. I remember going to Romania in January of 1990 and meeting soldiers trying to sell their AKs (for ridiculously high prices, BTW).

And a lot of Eastern European countries have now joined the EU, making it easy to truck merchandise from one end of the continent to the other.

The result? Some gangs in Western Europe now have relatively easy access to AKs. The Arab Spring will no doubt also facilitate the smuggling of more illegal guns from the Middle East and Northern Africa to Europe.

There are also a lot of militaria collectors in Europe who regularly break the law to get some items that are regulated or prohibited.

Now the bad guys over there have fire superiority. But even if getting a shotgun is still within reach for the average citizen, getting access to any other kind of weapon is very difficult. And forget about LTCs.

Things are changing in some countries. The firearm legislation in France is under review and some legislators are pushing for less paperwork and making it easier for law-abiding citizens to acquire them. Not sure if that will happen under the current government, but it could happen within years.

Now some of my friends in Europe (or antis in the US) sometimes tell me "Well you're acknowledging that gun control regulation did work in Europe, so why are you opposed to it here?"

And to me the answer is obvious and twofold:

1. The RKBA is in the US Constitution. Period. It's not in those other countries. Which is why, by the way, I don't like it when people transpose US issues to other countries, and vice-versa. It is a fundamental American right.

2. Historically, this country has been built with guns. It doesn't matter if you're Howard Zinn or Burton W. Folsom Jr., all historians will agree that they played a huge role in building this country. There are hundreds of millions of them. There is no way you can have gun control in this country on an even practical level. So deal with it.

To me, that settles it. I don't need any argument dealing with crime vs. gun control. It doesn't matter. There are plenty of very safe neighborhoods, some where everybody's got a gun (legally), and others where almost nobody does. And there are plenty of crappy neighborhoods where people can carry legally, or where gun control is very strict. It's not the legislation that really has an impact here, it's other factors: unemployment, poverty, education, population make-up, lack of LE, lack of services, etc.

If you start using statistics to make that point, the other camp will have just as many to throw at you. You're not going to convince them.

Just tell them this: there already are plenty of guns out there. Some in the hands of criminals (the minority), and most in the hands of law-abiding citizens. There is no way any amount of gun control is going to make a difference. You want less crime? Work on what causes crime. Hint: it's not guns.

Rant over. Back to work.

You and I have had differing POVs on a few things here, but this is a most excellent post.

I actually doubt that. Most, if not all guns are registered in Sweden. Not in the US. There are millions and millions of unregistered shotguns, rifles, pistols and BP firearms that are not registered and therefore uncountable. Those statistics are therefore skewed.

I am convinced there are far more guns per capita in the US than in Sweden. But that doesn't change anything anyway. This Swedish tragedy was an outlier, an anomaly. It can't be used by either side to make a point.

Actually, you're right. I meant to say Sweden has more registered machine guns per capita than the U.S.

P.S. I didnt Sweden had the mass shooting, that was Norway.

__________________

Vote for pro-gun candidates, or lose your rights, and the rights of future generations. That's it. The end.

I'm writing a paper about how I believe stricter gun laws will not reduce the number of homicides in United States.

It's an argumentative paper.

I need help on key points and maybe some links to articles where they discuss this subject.

The key points I already have.
1. Not constitutional
2. Only law abiding citizens will follow the law.
3.

I just need a couple more

Thanks

IMHO, you should leave point #1 out of your paper. I don't think the constitutionality of the laws is relevant to whether they will reduce crime.

There's an analogy that's been posted on this site, that making gun laws stricter to reduce crime is like trying to stop people from speeding through a 25mph zone at 70 mph by lowering the speed limit to 15 mph. All it does is make life difficult for law abiding citizens.

The largest mass shooting in modern history happened in a country with strict gun control. Columbine happened during the AWB. Sweden has more guns per capita than the U.S., but a far lower homicide rate. England banned guns in 1997, they still have gun crime, and now you're much more likely to be stabbed there.

I saw a new article yesterday where in England, some criminals wielding axes and bats rode into a mall on motorcycles and robbed stores. If the English had access to firearms I have no doubt these guys would have had guns, but the lack of guns did nothing to stop this crime.

The only way to answer this empirically is to compare homicide rates in a country before and after guns were outlawed. What this will reveal, I believe, is that places like the UK, where everyone knows they have a lower homicide rate than the US (presumably because they have strict gun control), always had a lower homicide rate than the US, even when guns were legally available there.

What you want to do is compare homicide rates before and after gun control was enacted.

...

This is correct but it ignores another approach. Demographics is a huge factor in homicide rates. For example we "know" that the US has higher homicide rates than Canada. But this ignores demographics since even in the US there are huge differences in homicide rates for different demographic groups. For example black males commit over 1/2 of all homicides in the US but are only about 6% of the population. IE. Black males commit homicides at about 8 times the rate of the general population.

In the US we have a much larger minority population than Canada and it can be argued that this accounts for much if not all the difference in homicide rates. I have read (Lott I think but this would need to be verified) that if you take the states that that border Canada that those states will have a demographic profile that is almost identical to Canada. If you compare homicide rates for these boarder states to Canada they are actually slightly lower than Canada but I don't think the difference is statistically significant. If the demographically adjusted homicide rate in the US is basically the same as in Canada with it's much stricter gun laws then perhaps this shows that these gun laws do not have a significant impact on homicide rates. I should add that most of the states that boarder Canada are more or less "free" states that have less restrictive gun laws. IE. Montana, Washington, Idaho, N Dak. and so on with a few exceptions like New York.

As an aside the high homicide rate committed by black males is a very sad thing. But it points to how the anti's ignore a very real issue when they go after guns but totally discount that some thing is very wrong in the black community. If we instead focused on that issue and tried to correct the under laying problems instead of focusing on gun control we might actually be able to make real progress on dealing with our countries violence issue.

I'm writing a paper about how I believe stricter gun laws will not reduce the number of homicides in United States.

It's an argumentative paper.

I need help on key points and maybe some links to articles where they discuss this subject.

The key points I already have.
1. Not constitutional
2. Only law abiding citizens will follow the law.
3.

I just need a couple more

Thanks

Sure it will! Look how well it has worked for NYC, Chicago, LA, Mexico and the UK! Oh, wait, their gun violence is at an all time high...

At least strict gun laws have kept the US government from running guns to drug cartels. Oh, wait...

__________________"What is a moderate interpretation of the text? Halfway between what it really means and what you'd like it to mean?""The cases will publish forever the discouraging truth that the Supreme Court of the United States favors some laws over others, and is prepared to do whatever it takes to uphold and assist its favorites."
-Antonin Scalia, Supreme Court Justice

and possibly even this, to show that harsh, nationwide prohibitions in a "gun free paradise" have not made it a paradise at all but the opposite: Guns and Violence: The English Experience by Joyce Lee Malcolm

__________________"The Religion of Peace":Islam: What the West Needs to Know.
". . . all [historical] experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms[of governmental abuses and usurpations] to which they are accustomed."
Decl. of Indep., July 4, 1776
NRA Benefactor/Life Member; Lifer: CRPA, GOA, SAF & JPFO

Some people just have the will to commit crime. And those people will exist until the end of time. Having said that, then there are those that have no problem murdering another person to get what they want. Firearms are simply one means that they use to do that. What the anti-gun extremists don't get is that banning firearms isn't going to change that.

Anti-gun zealots will attempt some form of logic by suggesting that while people will murder, banning guns will reduce their murderous rampage to just a few individuals if all they have are knives or machetes in which to kill their victims. Apparently they are unaware that people have gone on rampages with cars and just ran people over to commit mass murder. And of course there are the home made WMDs, aka IEDs, that people have manufactured. If a person wants to commit mass murder, they will find a way, but liberals are too narrow minded to get that.

The actual violent crime rate would go up like the United Kingdom though.
Take a look at Jamaica. Firearms for the commoner are verboten and their drug gang fueled murder rate is ten times higher than the United States.

The main thing that seems to go down as a trend when gun control is enacted (looking at europe and austrailia) is that GUN suicides go down, not necessarily suicides as a whole. At least this is based on the stats I found when googling.

__________________
WTB: multiautomatic ghost gun with a .30-caliber clip to disperse with 30 bullets within half a second. Must include shoulder thing that goes up.

I'm writing a paper about how I believe stricter gun laws will not reduce the number of homicides in United States.

It's an argumentative paper.

Ok. So, arguments FOR gun control:
1. If people don't have guns, there can be no gun crime!
2. If guns are less easily available, there will be less gun crime!
3. If people don't have guns that easily kill lots of people, they can't easily kill lots of people!
4. Criminals can get guns legally! This needs to stop!

Ok, so to break those down completely, because these things are what liberals actually believe:
1. A gun free-utopia cannot exist. If people don't have guns, there can be no gun crime - you're completely right - but that can never exist in the United States, or, for that matter, anywhere in the world. There's always a way to get a gun, legally or illegally.
2. If guns are less easily available, then the ones that criminals always have, and all of the ones available on the black market, are still just as easily available to criminals. The fact is, criminals already have the guns they need, and if they don't, they can steal them from someone's house. Burglars are the main reason that deadly guns end up on the black market.
3. "Assault weapons" are rarely used in crime. More importantly, the guns doing the most damage are the small handguns that are all over any big city street. You can't conceal an AK-47, nor can you easily find a machine gun for sale. More importantly, even if you took all of the "assault weapons" off of the streets, there's still criminals out there with them. If someone really wants to murder lots of people, they'll find a way. Heck, even when guns are effectively removed from the streets, people still find a way. In China, people go on mass knife/hatchet murder sprees. Gun control, the likes of which to work in America, would have had to have been controlled for about 100 years already. Anyway,
4. Criminals can get guns legally? Are you kidding me? Many crimes have temporary bans on gun ownership - like 5-10 years - and any felony, or any domestic violence incident, or any restraining order against you immediately takes your gun rights away. Until you've proven that there's a reason why your rights from the bill of rights need to be taken away for the good of society, and until that's been proven in court, then you have them - that's all there is to it.

Here's the thing. Any criminal who wants a gun, can get one. If we ban guns? Well, I made a gun in my garage, using under $400 worth of tooling, under $500 worth of parts, with NO experience. I used a block of plastic - Delrin - and AR parts that I bought online. It was legal for me to do so, which is why I did it, but even if it wasn't legal for me to do so, I still could have done it. It wasn't even particularly hard to build a single shot pistol that shoots rifle rounds.

If I can build a gun in my garage easily - and I have - then criminals can too. This means that criminals will ALWAYS BE ARMED.

If criminals will always be armed, why would you take away my rights, provided to me in the bill of rights, to make sure that I can defend myself against criminals? If I'm unarmed, and a criminal with a gun picks a fight with me, they will win. There's no maybe. I will walk away losing what they want me to lose... Or I won't walk away at all.

That's not good enough.

I'll keep my rights. I've proven I can build a gun in my garage. If you ban guns, I'll still have them, just like anyone who would want to hurt me.

__________________
Hunting is a loophole in the 2nd Amendment to the Bill of Rights.

There is no privilege to keep and bear arms.

Arms are for killing people. All other uses of an arm are illegitimate uses.

Guns & homicides from bullets have nothing to do with each other. Criminals commit crimes not tools. America has a societal problem, not a gun problem. In fact America needs more guns not less. America's societal problems can be traced to TV & the public school systems, which are both the responsibility of parents. Parents are failing their kids & our society. Criminals are rewarded & citizens are punished in the US. Follow the money & all shall become clear.

...If we instead focused on that issue and tried to correct the under laying problems instead of focusing on gun control we might actually be able to make real progress on dealing with our countries violence issue.

Yes.

A fundamental problem throughout the country on many different issues.
We are a society Hell bent on addressing the "results" of social issues, but not interested in addressing the causes.

"Too much work" probably, and an all too common feeling of "not my responsibility."

In the Greater Johannesburg area in South Africa there are 6 million people, about the same population as the Greater Bay Area. I don't know how many murders there are per year in the GBA, less than 750 I'd think. In Jo-berg there are 5000. Because handguns are very difficult to acquire,,, the preferred tool of murder is the machete.

Thanks but no thanks. I'd rather take two rounds to center mass rather than two dozen hacks to everywhere.

__________________It doesn't matter how scary, ugly, uncomfortable, or inconvenient self defense can be. Like it or not, you will never, ever be relieved of your duty and responsibility to defend your life, your family, your country and your freedom.

How much ammo do I need? Enough to last me the rest of my life, and then lot more for later.

The government does not come knocking at your door. It comes knocking down your door.

The problem, is that in some cases it does work, and the other side of the argument will point out countries that do ok with strict gun control. In a debate, you've just been defeated on that point IMO. Also, you can't PROVE your argument, only make a conjecture.

2. You should be arguing that "more guns don't = more crime."

With this approach you can point out all the states and counties that do issue LTC. Then you can show crime stats and show that there has never been an increase in gun crime and violence after the onset of LTC policies. You can also point to other countries like Switzerland where all men are members of the militia and keep FULL AUTO rifles in there HOME. What's there crime rate look like compared to Great Britain?
Then you can move on to point out how some countries have enacted stricter gun laws and crime/murder rates rose. In this case, it's easier to concede that yes indeed sometimes gun bans work, but just as often they don't. On the other hand, allowing lawfull citizens access to firearms has never increased crime rates.

In either case, be prepared for the counter arguments. They are usually the same, but all of these can be proven not to be true with some facts.

Be smart, make sure that your argument can't be defeated. Don't ever make an argument that can be countered with facts, then you just look like them. That's a mistake a lot of people make, I even see it a lot on the forum. People make the wrong argument, or approach from the wrong angle and get backed into a corner.

__________________

Quote:

“Thoſe who would give up Essential Liberty to purchaſe a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” - An Historical Review of the Constitution and Government of Pennsylvania (1759)

Often times in argumentative papers, its a good idea to include alternate solutions.

What do my fellow calgunners think would actually deter crime?

My ideas
-Death penalty for crimes commited with guns (exceptions for lawful self defense) as in felony assault with a weapon, robbery, etc...

-Statewide shall-issue CCW with national reciprocity, with a 10 year prison sentence for anyone caught with a gun and no CCW. (exceptions for travel, and securing firearms misunderstandings...big difference between a gun in its case unlocked, and one on a KKK members belt or in his glove box loaded.)

-Must register your weapons if you live in high crime areas. dont like it, move out.

Murder is murder, whether committed with bare hands, a rock, a gun, a 10,000lb bomb, or the jawbone of an ***. All these stupid ‘firearms enhancements’ are just pits and snares to entrap the common man and make him fearful of exercising his rights; least some minor transgression blow up into a 10 or 20 year sentence simply because he happened to have a gun in his pocket.

__________________Take not lightly liberty
To have it you must live it
And like love, don't you see
To keep it you must give it

"I will talk with you no more.
I will go now, and fight you." (Red Cloud)

They should pass a law making suicide illegal and then we'd automatically reduce gun deaths in America by 50%.

Oh wait, suicide is already illegal. Maybe we should pass another law making suicide by gun "double illegal". Yeah, that will fix it....

Gun violence in America is a societal problem, not an inanimate object problem or a law problem. Too many untreated and ignored mentally disturbed people, too many children without good role models, too many homes with no one available to teach kids right and wrong and to discipline them and teach them actions have consequences.

No, No No, You have it all wrong. If you kill yourself with a gun you should get the death penalty. That way they will have to resurrect you and put you on death row with your own carpet and curtains, TV, and internet. And you can die of old age while the state pays for endless appeals.

__________________Take not lightly liberty
To have it you must live it
And like love, don't you see
To keep it you must give it

"I will talk with you no more.
I will go now, and fight you." (Red Cloud)